Tuesday, June 5, 2012

The Boyproof Watch: Conclusion

(hey friends: and here's where it all wraps up. It's been a fun experiment writing a serial, and while I'd do some things differently next time, I've been enjoying seeing where the story has gone--including a few places that I hadn't expected! Thanks to those of you who've written with comments and suggestions. Keep them coming!)

VII

When Maskelyne woke the next day it
was late morning so he sent an order to his kitchen for brunch, an order he had
to eventually give to his clock in diagram form. Nevertheless the kitchen staff
succeeded in the unorthodox task admirably, and as he polished off the last bit
of smoked salmon frittata and crisp bacon he momentarily considered making
brunch a regular feature.

On leaving his house he considered
not activating his garden sentinels, but decided that it was best to do so. His
enemy must not suspect the trap, so as near as he could he would stick to his
routine.

It was Monday and his absence had
created piles of work but he could scarcely concentrate on any of it. Invoices,
playbill design, construction and repair orders were all scanned then pushed
aside. He left his office and sought out Mirch, demanding his assistant give
him a complete tour of the backstage and a progress report from all the
mechanics. His staff was flustered and unprepared but though he scowled he
really had little interest in their mistakes, so while his questions were
pointed he gave no reprimands. At 4:40
when he held the daily meeting with his staff his distraction was obvious, and it
was the gossip of the company after his departure.

As he approached his front door he
could hear the sound of his hallway alarm bell insistently ringing, but he
entered at a steady pace. He didn’t even bother to open up the cabinet and see
where the security had been breached. He merely doffed his coat and hat, took
his gin and tonic from the coat rack, and walked upstairs, his excitement
growing with each step.

The first thing he noticed was that
again the Aetheric Navigator had been moved on the workbench, and now the
lights on its console were blinking erratically. His visitor had begun here,
further meddling with the mechanism. He moved it aside impatiently.

The box with the Boyproof Watch was
gone. He brought his hands together in a satisfactory clasp. He hadn’t dared
hope that his unseen nemesis would act so quickly, but now that he had, he felt
like a celebration. He practically danced down the stairs to his study, drained
off his drink, and instructed the coat rack to fetch him another. He went on to
enjoy a particularly fine Bordeaux
that night from his cellars.

That night Maskelyne lay in bed
smiling and imagining his enemy’s fascination and frustration with his “gift.”
Given the skill that the boy had already demonstrated in eluding his sentinels
and breaking into his home multiple times, he was certain that he’d be doing
more than dropping the watch down some stairs or prying at it with a jackknife.
He thought back on his own childhood exercises in destruction, how he’d studied
levers, pry bars, screws and joints in his attempt to crack open any number of
items. He had to hand it to the boy: he suspected him of an even greater talent
for mischief than he had had as a child.

But talent enough to open the
watch? He doubted it. Even Maskelyne himself with his workshop, with forge,
presses, weights and drills, would find opening the casing a daunting task. And
he had enough faith in his own skill as a watchmaker to know that nothing short
of this, not fire, water nor lightning, could otherwise disturb its mechanism.

He fell to sleep to the reassuring
tick of his bedside clock.

The weeks passed without event. The
silver bell in the hall was silent and his work went undisturbed, with no
further disturbances at his house nor any items in the newspaper regarding
children and explosions. Soon Maskelyne had returned to his work and his
routine.

By December the events of the
autumn were a vague memory. The Egyptian Fortuneteller was back at his post,
gears and workings replaced, and more popular than ever, thanks to certain
adjustments that his creator had made which allowed it to stroke its crepe beard
meditatively. In fact Maskelyne’s creative mind had been rejuvenated by the
contest, and he had constructed a new act for the Theatre, a trapeze troupe of
mechanicals who executed aerial somersaults and pirouettes of such exquisite
flawlessness that he had been threatened with legal action from two local
circuses claiming unfair competition.

His sole mechanical frustration was
the Aetheric Navigator, which ever since its last visit from his adversary had
taken to flashing its lights in a steady yet meaningless sequence not
corresponding at all to the code he had developed for calculating astral
longitude and latitude. Until he could determine how to fix it he banished the
mechanism to the basement.

Then one late afternoon the week
before Christmas he came up the snowy path to his front door and saw by the
porch light a small box covered in silver paper. Leading to, and away, from the
box were small shoe prints in the snow.

He left the package where it was,
and switching on his electric torch followed the trail. It weaved through the
grounds until it intersected with the sculpture of a winsome badger. Beneath
the badger was a small pool of blood, and its razor-sharp teeth were red and
still wet. From here the footsteps were shadowed by a separate trail of drops of
red. He followed these to a section of the perimeter gate. Bending close, he
saw that that there was a curve in the metal ornamental juncture just large
enough for a small body to wiggle in and out of.

Despite his expectations, Maskelyne
felt no exhilaration. Instead an anxious nausea roiled his stomach. For the
first time he considered his small enemy as a human being, and it was a deeply
uncomfortable feeling.

He returned to the porch and took
the box inside. He placed it on a small table in his study and opened it with
his fingertips gingerly, fearing a trap. Inside was a small blue pot containing
a single flower. It was of a form and color he had never seen before, the folds
of a rose re-imagined as flame, with bright red petals at its fringe turning
orange and yellow towards its center, and in the deepest part of the blossom
was just the thinnest tinge of blue.

Alongside the flower was a folded
letter. “Dear Professor Maskelyne,” it began, in a child’s careful cursive.
Maskelyne read through the note, of apology and explanation. Then he read it
again. And then he turned and walked at a brisk pace out of his house.

When the maid at the Del La Roches
opened the door she was clearly agitated and distracted. She explained that
Grace, the older of the two daughters, had been injured in a sledding accident
while playing and her father had rushed her to the hospital. Maskelyne received
the name of the hospital and left immediately.

That evening the De La Roches,
father and daughter, received a visit from Maskelyne at their hospital room.
Young Grace was asleep and her skin was even paler than her straw-blonde
hair.The wound to her arm had nicked an
artery and bled much, but the surgery was successful and her doctor predicted a
full recovery.

Mr. De La Roche blamed himself.
Ever since his wife’s death several months ago he had failed to give his
daughters proper supervision, he said. Maskelyne had no words of comfort, but
when the father expressed anxiety about his other daughter back at home, he
suggested the man go fetch her while he himself remained watching over Grace.

Two hours later when De La Roche
returned with his other daughter, Grace was awake and chatting with Maskelyne.
“Your daughter is quick-witted and charming,” he told De La Roche. “And I
believe that we have an affinity. I would like to offer her a position as an
apprentice in my workshop.” Grace, though still pale, gave her father such a
heartbreakingly hopeful smile that he agreed at once.

Within a week Grace had begun her
after-school apprenticeship with her neighbor, working until dinner each
evening. As a first order of business Maskelyne gave her a copy of the key to
his front gate.

In years to come their relationship
was not always easy, for they were both strong-willed, devious and imaginative.
But on one thing they both agreed: Maskelyne was the greatest inventor of his
age. And among his many successes he could count the invention of the world’s
first Boyproof Watch.

About Me

I'm a Seattle-based writer, playwright and director. For the last fifteen years I've worked as a freelance arts journalist, primarily for Seattle Weekly, where I was the theatre critic from 1995-2000, and subsequently as a theatre columnist from 2006-2008, then worked at The 5th Avenue Theatre for two years as their PR Manager. I've recently turned to fiction writing and am currently working on my second novel.